In search of our missing "K": Our Crafty Christmas

This year since we were going to be with our family we made a lot of the gifts. It was great not having to worry about being able to ship something.

I made rice hand warmers since I knew we would be outside in the cold taking pictures. The flowers for the girls black and white polka dots for the boys. I also made some for up for friends. 30 pairs in all!

tutorial found here

It took forever to cut all the fabric because each one I lined with a layer of fleece. That meant for each warmer I had to cut four squares.

Ken and I made these cute welcome stands for my Mom and best friend Jullian. I found the idea on, where else, Pinterest. Here is the link. It was fun working with Ken on this project and we really like how they turned out. We did make it taller then the original post called for. If we had a porch that was protected from the wind we would have made one for ourselves as well.

We had them open the signs first before we brought the stand out. We had the stands wrapped in black garbage bags...classy I know. :)

Ken helped to cut all the packing tape off.

I loved this idea and thankfully she provided the print on her website. All I had to do was buy the frame, dry erase marker and print out the sign. Simple, cute and fun!

fill in the number of days on top and what you are counting down to on the bottom

Last year our crafty neighbor made us a set of coasters out of tiles. I loved them and thought what a great gift so of course I wanted to make them. I found this helpful tutorial on Pinterest. I put two blue and two white coasters in each set. I made a set for my Grandma, my visiting teaching companion and the ladies we teach. Eng and Suzi you have a set coming to you. :)

One of my favorite gifts to make are photo books from Shutterfly. This year I made up several.

A book of Katie's 3rd year photo shoot pictures for her birth mum K and grandparents.

Ken's Mom

My Mom

Katie was asleep on my lap while K was opening her presents so I didn't get any pictures. Her book was a little different than the one for the Grandparents. It included special pictures that I made up to honor her. Here are those pictures:

For my Grandpa Jack I made a past and present family book. This was a gift from me, my sister and brother. It started off with pictures of my Grandpa and Grandma. Then each member of our family had a two page layout followed by individual family pictures. At the end came several pages of pictures from over the years of all of us. It was fun to go through my old photos and relive the fun memories we have shared together.

For my Grandpa Ed's book, I used the same format as the other one except of course I used pictures of him and my Grandma Ilene. When my Grandpa opened the book and saw the pictures of my Grandma he said tenderly, "That's my Ilene." We all got a little misty eyed. (My Grandma passed away two years ago. She actually passed away a few hours before we were sealed to Katie.)

Since we had these awesome books made up for my Grandparents I wanted one too. The only thing was, I didn't want separate books for each set of Grandparents so I decided to make one huge book with everyone in it. 48 pages later and my family book "Generations of Love" was completed.

We decided to give this book to my parents for their 40th wedding anniversary which is a week after Christmas. My Mom and Dad knew that I was making this book but what was a surprise (to my Mom) was that I included pictures of her parents in the book. (Her parents have been passed away for years.) She was surprise and very touched to see their pictures.

The original five

The moment she realized her parents were apart of the book.

I love my parents so much!

It has been a tradition for the past 4 years that I make a calender using our family pictures. This year was no different.

However this year I did do something different with the calendar. Can you spot what I did?

Whoops! I made a 2014 calendar instead of 2013. I have to print up new ones and send them out. We all had a good laugh over this!

I found this plate and I thought both my grandpa's would enjoy it. It would make a great catch all. (a place to put their wallet, keys and whatever else they carry in their pockets everyday. This video showed me how. The best tool was the cork! It worked great on the tile coasters too.

My Grandpa Jack loves to travel so I wanted to find a vintage map to use but I couldn't find one. However I did find this scrapbook paper that worked perfectly for the plate I had picked out.

The paper was double sided so I didn't have to cover up the back at all. (I love this paper!) I also took a gold paint pen and colored around the edges. (Sorry I couldn't get the picture to turn around.)

For my Grandpa Ed I picked a patriotic paper. Again I went for the vintage look.

Unfortunately, the piece of felt wasn't wide enough to cover the whole back.

I came across this snowflake artwork and I knew Katie would have fun doing it. I also thought it would make a great gift for K.

I used a big thick canvas for K's.

For ours, a used a set of three smaller flat ones.

Once the paint drys you peel off the tape.

It really makes it standout when you outline it with a black sharpie.

K's all done. She was really impressed by it.

Our's hanging up. I don't like the design I did with the tape on the far right one. We might have to do another one next year and replace it.

Well that is all the crafts we made to give away. Everyone seemed to like their gifts. My favorite part was watching everyone open their presents. Since we don't live by each other I never get to experience that. It was so much fun!

I also made a felt tree for Katie in hopes that she would leave our Christmas tree alone. She loved it! Instructions found here.

photobomb by Kassie

It turns out though that I didn't need to worry about our tree. She did play with the ornaments on it but she was very gentle. In fact, she helped me put all the ornaments on the tree this year. It was fun doing this with her. Collecting ornaments is one of my favorite Christmas traditions and it brought me so much joy to see her enjoy the ornaments as well.

I have collected Hallmark's Mary's Angel ornaments since I was a little girl. I have enough to put them on their own tree. Next year they will be on a green tree so they will stand out better.